New network entities and associated regulations have fundamentally changed the structure of current telephony networks in national and international markets. Access has been opened to competitive interconnecting service providers, creating new network configurations and new demands on network resources.
As a result, as different services for wireless, analog and wireline (Time Division Multiplexing—TDM) have manifested themselves, traditional switch vendors have struggled to keep pace with new switch capabilities and the production of necessary “billing records” associated with each new switch. Unfortunately, all too often the introduction of a new capability or feature can be held up as the result of needing a new “billing record” to permit billing of the new feature or capability.
As such, due to the multi-tasking requirements placed upon a switch, as well as the lower priority of producing the billing records, the inherent accuracy of the billing records produced by the switch may be frequently called into question. Specifically, in many switch architectures, the hierarchical processing frequently places less importance on producing a billing record for a call than on the actual completion of the call. In addition, in some unfortunate circumstances, certain callers have fraudulently circumvented the creation of billing records by the switch. As such, not only do timing errors frequently appear in a billing record for a call, but it is also common for the billing record for the call to not even be produced. As a result, numerous calls have been either under-billed or not billed at all.